George Washington shocked Congress when he made this unprecedented move that changed America forever

George Washington set a precedent that would echo through American history.

The founding father wasn’t afraid to use his executive power.

And George Washington shocked Congress when he made this unprecedented move that changed America forever.

On this day, April 5, 1792, 233 years ago, George Washington issued the very first Presidential veto.

The President had an issue with what he viewed as the constitutionality of the first bill written and passed to determine the allotment of Congressmen in the House of Representatives.

The first allotment of the House of Representatives

When the Constitution was written, it ordered that a census be taken so as to find the appropriate allotment of members to the House of Representatives. This was mandated in Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution. It stipulated that one Congressman should be chosen for every 30,000 people.

Until the census task could be completed, a temporary number of members were chosen as stipulated under Section 2.

The first census began on August 2, 1790, under the direction of the Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson. U.S. marshals, with assistants, performed the task. The process officially ended nine months later, on May 2, 1791, and it counted 3,929,214 inhabitants in the states presently in the Union.

The Congress, with the new number in hand, then proceeded to compose a bill to arrive at a correct allotment of members for the next session. After great debate, a 120 member House was approved. This was the number and method pursued by Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists. 

It won out over the method proposed by Thomas Jefferson and supported by the Republicans.

The method used by Hamilton, divided the total population by 30,000, to obtain the number of seats to be allocated, it assigned them in a manner that reflected the perceived importance of each state. This approach would have disproportionately raised the number of seats in northern states.

When the bill was given to President Washington to sign into law, he spotted red flags in terms of constitutional intent and would not affix his signature.

Washington has issues

Washington called upon four members of his cabinet to discuss the contents of the bill and the new allotment. He received a split decision.

Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Randolph (who was the Attorney General) opposed believing that the population of each individual state divided by the 30,000 benchmark should determine the number of each state’s representatives.

Jefferson would state: “If the [ratio of] representation [is] obtained by any process not prescribed in the Constitution, it [then] becomes arbitrary and inadmissible.”

He also pointed out to Washington that the votes cast on the bill by members of the two Houses were divided perfectly along geographical lines between the North and the South.

Alexander Hamilton (Secretary of the Treasury) and Henry Knox (Secretary of War) were in support of the bill Congress had produced.

Washington decides

On April 5, 1792, President Washington came down on the side of Jefferson and Randolph and in an “American first,” he vetoed the bill passed by Congress.

Even though he agreed with their arguments, he was hesitant to cast the veto because as he stated “the vote for & against the bill (in Congress) was perfectly geographical.”  Washington feared that in implementing the veto “he should be thought to be taking side with a Southern party.” 

Further conversations with Jefferson, Randolph, and James Madison helped assuage Washington’s fears.

He wrote in his reply to the House of Representative two primary objections to the bill he had been handed.

“First—The Constitution has prescribed that representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers: and there is no one proportion or divisor which, applied to the respective numbers of the States will yield the number and allotment of representatives proposed by the Bill.”

Washinton continued, “Second—The Constitution has also provided that the number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand; which restriction is, by the context, and by fair and obvious construction, to be applied to the seperate and respective numbers of the States: and the bill has allotted to eight of the States, more than one for thirty thousand.”

Congress reacts

With the bill sent back to the House, Congress also produced a “first” by attempting to override the veto. But in the end, they could not muster the votes needed to override Washington. 

The House then threw out the original bill, constructing another bill which apportioned representative at “the ratio of one for every thirty-three persons in the respective States.” This resulted in a 105 member House and utilized the method advocated for by Jefferson. This was passed on April 10, 1792, and would be signed into law by the President.

This method would be used until 1840.

Modern changes to Apportionment

Over the ensuing years, there has been a host of various fights, challenges, and changes to apportionment.

In 1832, Senator Daniel Webster from Massachusetts, proposed a new method for calculations, but it failed. It would pass 10 years later in 1842, and the size of the House reduced to 223 members from 240.

In 1911, Joseph Hill (chief statistician of the Census Bureau) proposed the Huntington-Hill method. This was adopted in 1941 with a House size of 435.

The 435 figure for seats in the House of Representatives arose from The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which became law.

Then the “one-person, one-vote” rule was set by the Supreme Court in a 1962 decision, requiring that every district be “as mathematically equal as reasonably possible.”

Under that principle, the geographic size of a district simply does not matter. The district’s level of representation is determined solely by the number of people who reside in the district.

Census of 2030 will greatly affect apportionment

Apportionment is not just a lesson of history of the past. It is about to once again have a major impact politically on the future of the country.

If present trends continue, major population shifts within the United States will be recorded in the 2030 Census. These trends show significant population loss in Blue states, shifting over to gains in Red states.

This will cost Democrats votes in the Electoral College, as they’ll lose several House districts due to loss of population in states they control.

Each state gets two Electoral College votes, plus one for each of its Congressional districts.

California is expected to lose four House seats, New York three, Illinois could lose two seats, and both Oregon and Rhode Island are on the edge of losing a seat each. 

Red states are projected to gain seats. Texas is set to gain four, while Florida is expected to pick up three. The states of Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah are expected to each gain a seat.

These changes will have a profound effect on the 2032 presidential race.

There have been huge changes over the last 233 years in terms of the number of Congressional Districts and their population size. The 30,000 person figure of 1792 has grown to an average of 761,169 people today.

But the basic system, debated and established by our Founders such as Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Randolph still functions and serves us well to this day.

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